As the year is coming to a close, our thoughts naturally reflect on the passage of time: how it shapes us, eludes us, and defines our existence. For centuries, artists have grappled with this fleeting concept, turning it into a central theme in their works. From ancient memento mori paintings, which remind us of life’s fleeting nature, to contemporary explorations of time’s tangible and emotional facets, the subject has inspired countless creative interpretations. Let’s take a look into how some iconic artists have explored and captured the essence of time.
Calder’s Hourglass Motif
Alexander Calder is often celebrated for his kinetic sculptures, but his recurring use of the hourglass motif is less explored and equally fascinating. The hourglass, a traditional and quintessential symbol of time’s passage, appears in his works as a gentle reminder of the delicate balance between permanence and transience. Calder’s hourglasses don’t merely measure time; they embody its fragility, each grain of sand representing a moment slipping irrevocably into the past.
Félix González-Torres, Intimacy and Time
In Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991 Félix González-Torres presents two identical battery-operated clocks placed side by side. Over time, the clocks fall out of sync, reflecting the inevitable imperfections of relationships and the quiet tragedy of time’s relentless forward momentum. This work invites diverse interpretations, and highlights the profound beauty of this conceptual masterpiece. It is often interpreted as a double portrait of the artist and his lover, Ross Laycock—who died from AIDS-related complications in 1991, five years before Gonzalez-Torres himself would succumb to the same disease—it carries a deeply personal and poignant significance. The work may appear deceptively simple, yet it speaks volumes about love, loss, and the passage of time, inviting viewers to reflect on the fleeting nature of life and the intimate moments that imbue it with meaning.
“Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, the time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain TIME in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit where it is due: time. We are synchronized, now forever. I love you.” – Felix Gonzalez.
Louise Bourgeois, Time Through a Feminist Lens
Louise Bourgeois’s Woman and Clock from 1994 addresses the pressures of time on the female body and identity. The clock looms large in the work, representing the societal constraints placed on women, particularly around aging and productivity. Viewed through a feminist lens, Bourgeois’s work questions the rigid structures that define women’s lives while embracing the fluidity and emotional complexity of time as a lived experience. This image of a woman winding a clock, trying to control time, is a motif that Bourgeois often returns to in her work. When asked in a 2004 interview why winding clocks was so important to her, Bourgeois explained, “Because to rewind is to make a spiral. And the action demonstrates that even though time is unlimited, there is a limit to how much you can put on it. As you are tightening the spiral you must take care. If you tighten too much you risk breaking it.”
Christian Marclay, The Collective Rhythm of Time
In The Clock, Christian Marclay stitches together thousands of film clips that depict clocks or references to time, such as when James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m.; Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m.; a pocket watch ticks at 11:53 a.m. as the Titanic departs. He creates a 24-hour montage synchronized to real-world time. The work is both a cinematic masterpiece and a fully functional timepiece.
Building on his background as a musician in Boston and New York’s underground scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s, Marclay has spent five decades merging visual and sonic fragments to explore the intricate interplay between image and sound. This ambitious project captures time as a collective experience, blending personal and universal narratives. The Clock speaks to cinema’s rich history as both a mirror of and escape from reality, a paradox that is ever more central to daily life in today’s era of instant broadcast, streaming services, and artificial intelligence. By watching The Clock, viewers are drawn into a heightened awareness of time’s presence, both in their lives and as a construct we share.
On Kawara, Dates as Markers of Existence and Daily Rituals
On Kawara’s works, particularly his Date Paintings series, transform dates into meditative markers of time’s progression. He began his Today series, or Date Paintings on January 4, 1966, and worked on the series for nearly five decades. The date is written in the language and format of the location where Kawara created the painting. Each piece was crafted with great precision over many hours, following a series of steps that never varied. If a painting was not completed by midnight, he would destroy it. The mechanical and disciplined nature of his routine transforms the creation of each painting into an exercise in meditation. Kawara’s works serve as reminders of life’s relentless rhythm while challenging us to find meaning in the simplest record of time: a date.
Salvador Dalí, Melting Clocks and Surrealist Time
Few images are as iconic as the melting clocks in Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory from 1931. These surreal, distorted timepieces question our rigid perceptions of time, bending and warping it into an abstract, dreamlike state. Dalí’s clocks remind us that time is not merely mechanical but deeply psychological, capable of stretching and compressing depending on our experiences and psychological state.
In The Persistence of Memory, Dalí captures the quintessential Surrealist vision, yet incorporates elements of tangible reality as well. The distant golden cliffs depict the Catalonian coast, Dalí’s birthplace. The melting watches, soft as overripe cheese—what Dalí described as “the camembert of time”—suggest a collapse of time’s structure. The ants, often a symbol of decay in Dalí’s work, swarm over a gold watch, their presence underscoring the theme of deterioration and emphasizing the unsettling, almost organic quality of the scene. The year prior to creating this painting, Dalí started his "paranoiac-critical method," a process where he intentionally put himself into states of hallucinations to create his art.
Olafur Eliasson, Ice as a Timekeeper and Symbol of Climate Change
Olafur Eliasson’s Ice Watch takes time into the realm of the natural world. By placing massive chunks of melting glacial ice in urban settings, Eliasson transforms these blocks into natural sundials, marking the passage of time in the form of melting water. This work is not only a reflection on time’s physicality, but also a reminder of its connection to ecological urgency. The slow melting of the ice reflects both the natural rhythms of the Earth and the accelerating effects of climate change. In Ice Watch, time is both a personal experience and a planetary measure, linking human perception with environmental transformation. Like memento mori art, which reminds us of life’s impermanence, Eliasson’s melting ice carries the dual message of inevitable change and the urgency to act before it’s too late.
Edvard Munch: Confronting Mortality in His Self-Portrait
In many of his self-portraits, Edvard Munch portrays himself as desolate and solitary. He confronts his life with unflinching honesty, refusing to mask its hardships. The self-portraits from Munch’s final decade often allude to the inevitability of death. In Self-Portrait between the Clock and the Bed, Munch depicts himself as an aging man, positioned between the clock, a symbol of time’s relentless march, and the bed is a metaphor for death, kind of referring to the final rest. Behind him, a sunlit room filled with his artworks represents the life and legacy he has created, and in front of him a shadow cast on the floor is the shape of a cross, evoking the inevitability of mortality.
Memento Mori and Vanitas: Reflecting on Time's Fleeting Nature in Art
Historically, memento mori and vanitas art served to remind viewers of life’s impermanence and the inevitability of death. From skulls and decaying flowers to extinguished candles, these symbols encourage reflection on what can be so fleeting in life. Contemporary works continue to explore this fleeting nature and the fascination of time, anchoring us to the universal truth, time waits for no one. As we transition into another new year, these artworks invite us to pause and consider the complexities of time.
